A scathing United Nations ruling against Australia's "cruel and degrading" practice of locking up refugees indefinitely on the basis of secret ASIO assessments has been brushed aside by Tony Abbott's government.

The international lawyer who took the case to the UN has slammed the response as a "two-fingered salute to the world", just days after Mr Abbott decried being "lectured" by the UN over a separate critical finding.

Official correspondence obtained by Fairfax Media shows Australia had already rejected the far more substantive ruling of the 18-member UN Human Rights Committee on indefinite detention before Mr Abbott's criticism this week of the independent special rapporteur on torture.

The committee's ruling centred on more than 30 recognised refugees who remain locked in Australian immigration detention as a threat to national security – yet none are charged with a crime or permitted to know the detail of the ASIO finding against them.

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The Prime Minister decried being "lectured" by the UN over a finding on asylum seeker detention. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

The refugees are not able to challenge the content of the secret security assessments in court.

Ben Saul, a Sydney University international law specialist who took the complaint to the UN committee on behalf of the group, said Mr Abbott's statement this week the Coalition had "stopped the boats" and so saved lives at sea was irrelevant in the case of indefinite detention because the policy was not intended as a deterrent for asylum seekers.

Some of the refugees have now been held more than five years, spanning Labor and Coalition governments.

Most are Tamils who fled Sri Lanka's civil war.

In the correspondence, Australia told the UN it "sincerely regrets" missing by almost a year the 180-day deadline to respond to the committee's July 2013 ruling, which called for the refugees to be released and compensated.

But the government's eventual response, made in December last year but not public before now, gives no ground to the UN committee finding that Australia was "inflicting serious psychological harm" on the refugees in indefinite detention.

The government said prompt medical treatment is provided and "Australia is committed to minimising the factors that contribute to mental health deteriorations of individuals in immigration detention".

Police were called to the centre as recently as December and laid mattresses on the ground after a Burmese man spent a night on the roof threatening to jump.

The government also disagreed with the committee's interpretation of "arbitrary" detention and "arrest" that Australia has accepted under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

Professor Saul said the UN committee – an expert panel elected for four-year terms to act as independent legal experts – is the closest the world has to a human rights court.

In a written submission to the committee he described the government's response as "wholly unacceptable".

"The key legal point is the government is completely rejecting the committee's authority to interpret and apply human rights standards in the convention, which Australia has agreed they should do," Professor Saul said.

"It is really giving the two-fingered salute to the world."

The refugees have each been found to have a well-founded fear of persecution so cannot be returned home, but Australia's attempts to persuade other countries to resettle them have failed.

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Australia detained more than 50 refugees on adverse assessments two years ago, but the number has gradually whittled down after ASIO changed its assessments.

An review by a former federal court justice in 2012 has also recommended several assessments be overturned, while upholding most.

Daniel Flitton is senior correspondent for The Age covering foreign affairs and politics. He is a former intelligence analyst for the Australian government and was at one-time a university lecturer specialising in international relations.